Further exploration of music perception is proposed with an aim toward complementing what is already known about perceptual development from research in areas such as speech perception and color vision. A series of experiments on the perception of musical tuning from infancy to adulthood will be conducted. In order to enhance the generalizability of results, a variety of experimental paradigms will be used to explore infants', childrens', and adults' processing of musical stimuli that will be based on native and nonnative frequency interval patterns. Influences of family background on perceptual development will be probed by comparing music perception of infants from musician parents with that of infants from nonmusician parents, and the question of whether infants are born with an equipotentiality for the processing of music from a variety of cultures will be examined by providing infants with systematic exposure to nonnative music. Finally, paralleling recent work on infant speech perception, the influence of similarity to native structure on the preparation for later studies with infants. The proposed experiments promise to increase our understanding of perceptual development and to provide information about the importance of exposure to music early in life.